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ADHD

What is ADHD?

Of all the learning difficulties, ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is perhaps the one of the most difficult for parents to manage. Children with the symptoms of ADHD live daily under huge amounts of stress, as do the parents and siblings who live with and love these children on a daily basis. Their learning and their social functioning are both undermined by their excessive need to move, to act without thinking and to quickly lose attention for the tasks at hand.

Through our natural and holistic therapies, including Developmental Movement Therapy and Auditory Retraining Therapy, we are able to address the underlying causes of your child's ADHD and set them free from their difficulties to reach their full potential. What makes our approach different is that instead of looking at your child’s symptoms on a superficial level, we look for the underlying causes and are then able to address the different physical, social, intellectual and emotional aspects to ensure lasting change.

Learn more about our expert therapies and read the story of how we helped Stephanie overcome her suspected diagnosis of ADHD to become a happy and healthy learner.

How do I know if my child has ADHD?

A child with ADHD looks like every other child in the classroom. However he shows a preponderance of three categories of behaviour and will stand out because of these: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity which they will display many symptoms very early in life, often before the age of 6. Read about the specific symptoms of ADHD in our detailed article entitled ‘How do I know if my child has ADHD? Common symptoms of ADHD'.

Alternatively, you can Take our free online test to understand if your child would benefit from our natural and holistic therapies.

How can the Developmental Learning Centre help?

We primarily offer two therapies for children with learning and behavioural difficulties:

Can you imagine trying to build a house without putting in a firm foundation? Trying to remediate a child who simply does not have the equipment (wiring) and foundation (mature neurological system, good spatial awareness, listening skills and visual perception) for their “house of learning” is very difficult.

At the Developmental Learning Centre, we believe our first task is to in address the underlying immaturities to develop a good neurological foundation. To do this we use Developmental Movement Therapy (Extra LessonTM). Central to this therapy is the idea that learning and behavioural difficulties are a result of developmental issues in a child’s early years. This means they may not have received some of the sensory input they needed that form the basis of our learning processes. By repeating early childhood movement patterns, we are able to ‘rewire’ brain and rebuild the pathways and foundation of learning.

If your child has ADHD, it may be a result of an auditory processing difficulty or disorder, and they will be likely to benefit from Auditory Retraining Therapy. This therapy uses filtered music to mature the pathways in the brain needed to recognise different sounds when reading and spelling and to process spoken language quickly and efficiently. Music therapy is also used to treat children who are easily overwhelmed, hypersensitive and anxious, and have difficulty regulating their emotions.

It is relatively new and is not used by audiologists and speech and language therapist in NZ as a rule. In fact your GP, your audiologist and your speech and language therapist may not have heard of it. However it has been in existence for approximately 40 years. It was developed by a French ear nose and throat specialist, Dr Alfred Tomatis (www.tomatis.com ) and is incredibly effective for children with auditory dyslexia.